Durandal, Breeze and Ruby

03 September 2013

Have you been itching to see a SPA using Durandal and Breeze without entity Framework on the back end? The inventors of Breeze have answered that call by taking the Code Camper SPA using Durandal and Breeze from my Pluralsight course and swapped out the entire back end so it is now using Ruby on Rails. This is huge as it demonstrates how you can use Breeze in a SPA without relying strictly on the metadata tat Entity Framework (EF) provides. Sure EF makes it darn easy, but it is not the only game in town.

There is a quick run-down from their site on what they changed from ASP.NET and EF to Ruby. Obviously the back end changed to fit a more natural Ruby feel. The front end changed a little bit to add a Breeze-AJAX request interceptor an an Active Record data service adapter.

I enjoy working with ASP.NET, ASP.NET Web API and Entity Framework among other Microsoft stalwarts. But it’s nice to see practically the same SPA client code with Durandal and Breeze working with a Ruby back-end. Special kudos to Ward Bell for working so hard on this!